The Dying of the Light
by webgeekist
Summary: Healing is a natural part of life, even at the end of the world.
1. Chapter 1

**I promise no regular updates, but this thing has at least three parts to it.**

* * *

/

It was, by her estimations, just past 9am. The winter air was thick and grey, clouded over with a relentless gloom that fit her mood. She was hungry and tired – oh so very tired – and the countryside simply did nothing to help. The thick snow swallowed her every footstep, and the bitter cold – tolerable only thanks to the later morning hour – sapped her strength.

But she trudged onward. She had no choice.

No one could ever have accused Helena G. Wells of being clumsy, but the skill of stealth was something she had practiced long and earnestly before she acquired it. Even still, it had been practiced on human quarry, in alleys and dark roadways. She'd used shadows and the bustle of modernization as her camouflage, and her quick reflexes as her weapons.

In the wilderness, amongst grey, barren trees and a white terrain, even dim light failed to give her any familiar advantage. She cast the largest shadow for miles, and the thick blanket of ashen snow absorbed all the sound around her. In this chase, she was as much prey as predator, searching for a target with better senses and faster reflexes than even she possessed in an unfamiliar terrain populated by hungry, desperate wildlife. She could just as easily be eaten as find something to eat.

And she would deserve it, truth be told. If a wolf or a bear came across her and had her for breakfast, then the world will have achieved a natural form of justice.

She caused all this, after all.

What little sunlight that managed to penetrate the thick, ever-present clouds moved on the ground like a dying thing, thrashing and twisting across the land, and somewhere in the frozen undergrowth, maybe a hundred yards off, she spotted movement. Slowly, quietly, she crept forward, raising her weapon as she neared the movement. When she gained twenty yards, the movement suddenly turned into a standing animal – a _deer._

She wasn't skilled with that particular weapon, but she nonetheless sank to one knee and steadied it as she aimed the center of her sight at the animal's shoulder. Out of hunger or exhaustion or cold…or maybe loathing…her hands shook ever so slightly as she took one long, frigid breath. On a slow release, her hands steadied.

With a smooth squeeze, she pulled the trigger.

The animal dropped, having hopefully never felt the bullet that ended its life. The gun was slung along her back, its worn leather strap laid across Helena's chest. She would have to work quickly – the gunshot scared everything around her away, but it would not be long before the real predators swarmed to the smell of blood. With practiced motions, she cleaned her kill, then wrapped it up so that she could sling the creature around her, as well. Within minutes, she was on the move, having left enough entrails behind to throw the wolves from her scent.

She hated hunting. She hated killing other animals so that she might survive, but her tiny little vegetable garden was months away from yielding anything…if it ever would.

Most of all, though, she hated that necessity forced her to use a lethal firearm.

Guns did not belong in a civilized society, she had once said, and yet it was by the barrel of a gun she now survived.

There was no longer such a thing as civilization.

She had made sure of that.

/

"_I want you to look me in the eyes and take my life."_

_H. G. Wells had spent a very, very long time planning that moment before her. She'd spent a century within her own mind reasoning out all the sins the world had committed that would make it deserve destruction. Upon her reemergence into the world, it had done little to convince her that the human race didn't deserve to be culled any more than it had a century before. In fact, it deserved her wrath more in 2010 than it had in 1899, and she was all too happy to oblige._

_Oh, she had seen precious little to convince her that any progress made during her incarceration wasn't countered in equal part by atrocity. She had yet to find a freedom granted to civilization that hadn't come at the cost of another. She had immediately longed for just one person in the world whose ideas and ideals matched what the modern utopia should have made of all its citizens._

_As she stared into Myka Bering's pleading green eyes, she realized she had found that very thing within days of being thrust back into the world. Of all places, she had found it staring harshly at her from across the barrel of a gun._

_Now, months later, their positions were reversed, but the circumstance was the same. She held a snub-nosed revolver point-blank against the forehead of the only friend she had left. She held a gun to Myka's head._

"_Go on. Do it."_

_And Myka was begging her to pull the trigger._

"_DO IT!"_

_But she couldn't._

_With a roar, she dropped it, but in the same moment she also lifted the Minoan Trident to strike one last time. Myka lunged for the handle, desperate to stop its final strike, desperate to halt the inevitable, but Helena managed to swing it upward and across her temple before she could get any closer. _

_The other woman collapsed, unconscious. For an instant, Helena felt her heart hold still, her limbs freeze in fear, but she pushed the feeling away. It didn't matter._

_Soon, it would all be over._

/

It took her an hour to return to the small two-story house by a wide, partially frozen lake that had become her home. It had previous owners – that much had been obvious when she arrived – but they had fled quickly by the looks of it. Everything of sentimental value had been dragged from their dusty places, along with any non-perishable food item in the house. The occupants had kept firearms, and lots by the size of the open gun safe in the corner of the living room, but they left behind an older, bolt-action rifle and its ammunition.

With what remained of the perishable vegetables, Helena had planted a garden in the warmest, best-lit corner of the house. With what remained of the ammunition, Helena was living off what remained of the land until something managed to sprout.

When she got through the door, she dropped the deer, then the gun, then her supply bag to the floor and stumbled to the fireplace. The cold had seeped into the house in her absence, and she needed to restart the fire before she could cook. There was a stove in the kitchen, but with the electricity out it was useless, as were a great many conveniences. Instead, she had taken to cooking in the hearth.

The fire built, she eyed the old blue sofa, longing for a nap. She was considering it when a long, agonized groan flooded the house.

She rushed up the stairs, adrenaline and fear fueling her speed, and came to a halt next to a bed in the only bedroom as its occupant weakly thrashed against her own pain. Helena carefully took a seat beside her charge and stroked a fevered forehead with her cool hands until the long, lanky woman finally stilled.

It had been several long weeks with Myka, during which the other woman's body had fought off injury and infection. The former secret service agent had been in near-constant pain, and it hurt Helena to watch. She didn't deserve that kind of agony. She only deserved the best kind of happiness.

But Helena had robbed her of that.

"I found some meat, Myka. Let me go downstairs and try to make up a meal. You need to eat something. You won't heal if you don't."

Lucid only for a few momets before falling back into a troubled sleep, Myka whispred back the only words she had spoken to Helena since that day in Yellowstone.

"You should have pulled the trigger, Helena."

Each time, the words tore through her heart and added to her guilt.

There were a great many things she should have done.

/

"_NO!"_

_The man to her left shouted out in a familiar kind of pain, and Helena G. Wells's heart seized. She had made such a sound once, released such heartache in a mournful wail. Artie's shout carried all the notes of her own deepest regrets, and none of the grief one would exect to hear from someone who had just failed to save the world._

_He was a parent, and he'd just watched the almost certain death of his child._

"_You can't! Please! You'll kill everyone!"_

_Her dark eyes flew to the older man to her left. "That's rather the point, Artie," she said. "or hadn't I made that clear?"_

"_Not everyone deserves this fate, Wells!"_

"_And they will have their chance at survival. The species survived the last ice age. Perhaps this time, the human promise will shimmer a little longer before its luster is stripped away."_

_She hefted the trident, heavy with the mass and weight of the power its final blow would unleash, and with one final, angry cry she embedded it into the ground._

_The geyser, not far behind them, shot exponentially higher into the sky, dumping a hot rain onto her. She welcomed the sting, and the fire that would follow. She welcomed the burn, and her end._

"_You are a Warehouse Agent! I have known you, Artie, long enough to understand that you are not blameless! No agent ever is!"_

"_She is, Helena! Myka is! She is the best of us! She is everything you claim the human race isn't anymore!"_

_Hadn't Myka Bering been kind to her? Hadn't she genuinely counted her as a friend, despite her scheming and machinations? Hadn't she cared for the woman, this modern marvel of intelligence and education and compassion?_

_She cast her eyes back to the ground to the right, toward the edge of the rising stream. Myka's crumpled body lay too close to the water's edge, and too close to the woods, where trees that should have long ago been felled were beginning to take their final bow._

_Underneath unruly curls, lids closed to the devastation, the other woman's flawless face seemed at peace. She seemed in unconsciousness everything that Helena was meant to be in her success. Instead, her heart hurt, spreading a searing paing out across her chest and everywhere else at the sight. Myka was her only friend – the only thing left in the world that she even cared about – and she was in mortal danger._

_It would be kinder, she thought for a moment, to let her sink into the river, or to let the inevitable lava breach flow over her. She should not have to experience fear before the end. The longer she remained alive, the more chance she had of waking. _

_Helena didn't wish her pain._

"_You should have just pulled the trigger, Wells! It would have been kinder! Why did you even bother to spare her life if you were just going to let her die, anyway?"_

/

It took longer than it should have to cook a meal. Without the aid of electricity, preparing and keeping any sort of food items was difficult. It was fortunate, then, that her childhood was spent in an age without such luxuries as refridgerators and stovetop ranges. She knew how to stretch a kill for as long as possible.

The stew was meager and barely palatable, but the best thing she'd fed herself all week. What rations they had and could spare were put toward Myka's nutritional needs, just as what few first aid items they had were used to keep the other woman's injuries under control. There had been infections - fevers, even, and no small amount of pain - but the danger had been kept under control. She had no sepsis, and what open wounds remained were healing with healthy tissue.

Physically, Myka would recover. Mentally, Helena couldn't be sure.

She walked wearily back up the stairs with a tray filled with a bowl of stew, a pitcher of clean water, and clean bandages. As quietly as possible, the former agent pushed the paint-stripped door open and stepped inside the bedroom.

It was a small room that had, perhaps, been built by the hands of the house's true owner. The walls were paneled by greyed, old wood that seemed to match the sky outside the single window to the right of the door. It was sparsely decorated - a table lamp sat on a natural wood dresser beside the closet at the back of the room, and another smaller one sat on the floor beside the lone wooden nightstand, where Helena had placed it to accommodate all the supplies that Myka needed. The bed was a beat-up wooden four-poster, and the mattress was draped by a tattered and faded quilt - it may have once been colorful, but that color had long since been washed out. The window bore the only other decor, a simple set of wispy white curtains.

In all the room, it was Myka who bore the most color.

Helena placed the tray on the nightstand and poured some of the water into a waiting bowl. She took one of the bandages, dipped it into the water, and began wiping the still-sleeping woman's face.

The darkness within her had blinded her to the truth written across that face, a truth Helena should have been happy and grateful to discover. Her blind rage at a world gone awry masked it from her, buried it, made it insignificant in the light of that burning desire to tear everything apart.

Had she paused in her plans for just a few moments longer, had she given the truth just a few more moments to break through the darkness, it would have cleared long ago.

The truth was she was in love with Myka Bering, and she had denied it for months. She denied it at Yellowstone as the other woman begged her to reconsider, then begged the time traveller not to force her to bear witness to the end of her world.

She had seen that truth too late to spare the world from her wrath, and she had nearly seen it too late to save Myka from the same.

/

_It was the tree that made her decision._

_Seized by her indecision, by her conflicting emotions, she had been rooted to her spot, hand still on her instrument of ultimate triumph. Artie's voice was weaker, and Helena suspected the blood loss was finally taking its toll. But in his tone came an accusation: one she had heard only minutes before from the very subject of her debate._

_She was a coward._

_At once, she realized how right Myka had been, and how blind anger had made her to that truth. She realized how cowardly it was to deny her friend that quick death, rather than leaving her to suffer the same painful, fiery end Helena had consigned herself to._

_She realized that her rage and drive for revenge had carried her one step too far, ruining the last good thing left in her world for the sake of ridding the world of everything she perceived to be evil._

_Stricken, desperate, the hands that were still curled around the shaft of the Minoan trident yanked the object back out of the ground, but it made no difference. The quakes continued, the rain grew hotter._

_An ancient, barren tree snapped off its base at the edge of the treeline, hurtling toward the ground...towards Myka. Her reflexes had been dulled by immobility and time, but they were still fast enough to grab the other woman by her shoulders and give a mighty heave. to clear them both. It was far enough to avoid the massive trunk, but not enough to avoid a thick, thrashing limb._

_Helena herlsef eas knocked backwards by the impact, and the grip she had around the taller woman's shoulders was wrenched free. A cry came from somewhere as she hit the ground, muffled by ringing in her ears. She couldn't tell which of the three of them it had come from._

_Another low, feminine moan came from the direction of the fallen tree, and she had her answer._

_"Myka!"_

_Artie's voice was low and weaker, but alarmed. Quickly, Helena rose to her feet once more._

_She had saved the pair of them from the trunk of the tree and a certain death, but not the branches. Myka was trapped beneath them, pinned at her legs and chest, and moaning in agony._

_She damned her slow reflexes, and damned herself on the next heartbeat._

/

"Myka...wake up. You need to eat something."

Soft fingers met the secret service agent's cheek and lightly caressed it. She didn't deserve to be able to do such a thing, but she hoped that the gentleness would rouse her charge without alarming her. Too many times in the past few weeks, she had been startled awake, and her arms swung and her legs kicked by instinct. More than once, the exertion had ripped stitches open. Their supplies were dwindling - Myka could afford no more such setbacks.

But the other woman didn't stir. Helena sighed, placing the hand gently against her arm.

"Please, Darling. Wake up."

"You don't get to call me that."

The words, she knew, were meant to be harsh, but they were carried on a weak voice. Still, they were words, and different ones, and they gave Helena a small amount of relief. It was progress, and she would take what she could.

"You need to eat something," she repeated, stern in volume but soft in tone. Green eyes opened, barely, and looked at her. Even through the other woman's pain-clouded expression, she could plainly see the accusations and the betrayal that marred the perfect surface of Myka's beauty. Not for the first time, a tide of guilt rose quickly, threatenng to close her lungs and throat and drown her. It was only for the woman before her that she bothered to continue living, a wretched creature that deserved every scorn that could be thrown at her. Every scorn that Myka would hurl upon her, the moment she was fit.

The stew was spoon-fed to the patient, still too weak to handle feeding herself without making a terrible mess. Helena was pleased by the amount she managed to get Myka to eat this time, and how much of what little variety remained to them that meal had included. Too soon, though, Myka was nodding off again.

"You should have..." came the whisper, and as she cleaned, Helena mentally braced herself for the impact of those same haunting words. For a moment, she thought she was spared as her charge seemed to have nodded off, and she expelled a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She continued her clean up.

The words caught her off guard, then.

"You should have let me help you, Helena. You could have talked to me."

Her breath hitched as she whirled back to face the woman on the bed, to acknowledge that she was right, to beg her forgiveness, but she knew immediately that Myka had fallen back into a restless sleep.

Items gathered, she descended the stairs once more. It took some time to clean and sterilize and tidy as best she could. She placed a lid on the pot she had prepared the meal in, cooled by the time her chores were complete, and placed it outside beneath the snow. Then, she ascended the stairs once more.

Myka wouldn't approve, but Helena had taken to sleeping beside her. It was a decision born of necessity - the stubborn younger woman had attempted to get out of bed about a week ago and had promptly collapsed back onto still-fractured legs. The pain-filled wail was enough to keep the inventor's adrenaline running for an entire day.

Ever since then, she had watched over the sleeping woman like a hawk. She reasoned that it was her penance, her sentence to watch over her, to care for her, as if repairing Myka's body would make up for some of the damage she'd done to the planet. It was a ridiculous notion. No penance could fix the betrayal. No punishment would be enough to make up for everything that had happened.

Helena scooted close enough to Myka to feel her move, if she did at all, but far enough away that she didn't touch. Her head hit the pillow and her mind shut off.

She held no expectations. Not anymore.

/

_The trident was the only sharp weapon available to her._

_She picked up the instrument and rushed to Myka's aid, Artie's curses and anger fading into the background as she worked quickly to pierce through the limbs. It was an imperfect solution, one that possibly did as much damage to Myka as the limb, but she had no options._

_By the time she finally freed the agent, she was unconscious again. She carefully gathered Myka into her arms._

_The world rocked violently just as she steadied herself. The water had ceased falling some time ago, and it came of the geyser so hot now that it hit the open air as steam. They were out of time._

_And she had to save Myka._

_Artie's eyes were shining when her eyes met his moments later, a silent apology passing from the destroyer of the world to its would-be savior. He had a small smile on his face, but she knew it was not for the apology. "Thank you," he mouthed. Then, his strength found its end, and he pitched over, unconscious._

_She would never be able to move him, and there would be no time to go back to try, but somewhere in the back of her mind his relief was registered, and his acceptance was logged. She convinced herself that he knew this, that he understood what begging Helena to save Myka meant for himself._

_The ground continued to pitch and roll beneath her as she staggered to her car, cast off-balance by her heavy charge, but it was with care that she strapped Myka into the front seat, and with haste that she pushed the vehicle to its limits and a skill she knew she shouldn't possess, she escaped the physical manifestations of her own wrath and found a southbound highway._


	2. Chapter 2

Despite the gathered shadows and the dim, fading light, the stainless steel watch around her wrist read 2:32. She admired the timepiece, an elegant solution to the problem of the pocketwatch. It had become a piece of jewelry in modern times, something that could even wind itself endlessly based on the motion of the wearer's arm. She thanked Myka's practicality silently as she twisted her wrist to look at the gleaming metal band - time was something important, something worth keeping track of even in the darkest of days. Without electricity and power, without batteries, what little they had needed to be low-maintenance and reliable.

Helena had taken to keeping it on at all times to ensure it remained wound...also to remind her why she simply had to find more resources, and why she had to return to the house alive.

The many implications and significances of the watch were considered and carried with her, but it was the simplicity of it that Helena most appreciated. The Swiss had always constructed timepieces of the most exacting quality, and it surprised Helena not at all that in spending what was surely no small amount of money on a watch, Myka had chosen utility and quality over beauty and name.

It had been two months since Yellowstone, and it had been the longest period of her life. Myka's recovery had been slow, complicated by repeated injury and lack of proper nutrition. Helena had finally solved the nutrition problem - she'd found an abandoned neighborhood of homes two miles south of them along the lake shore, some still stocked with non-perishables and common medications. Guilt was nowhere to be seen in the face of Myka's potential salvation, and Helena had scrapped her hunt for that day and loaded herself down with as much as her satchel and every other bag she could find would carry.

But that same day, she had returned to the house to find Myka unresponsive and burning with fever.

Desperately, her body was hefted into shaking arms and raced down the stairs, out the door, and into the gathering snowpack beneath the weather-beaten back deck. Time slipped past slowly as her body temperature eased down. Finally, Myka's eyelids fluttered open. Finally, Helena allowed herself to breathe again.

Time had become critical after that. Helena refused to leave her alone for more time than was absolutely necessary. But more than that, the days were growing shorter and bleaker. If she didn't begin her journey back to the house with enough time to spare, darkness would be upon her before she arrived, and what predators remained would snarl at her hels as she raced back to the cabin.

And as Myka healed, Helena began to contemplate their next move. She had been forced to stop well north of her preferred destination thanks to the extent of the other woman's injuries, and she knew that as the blanket of clouds continued to grow darker over their heads, as it blocked out all the light and suffocated the world, living would become more difficult the further north they remained.

She turned the watch to its face again - 2:40. She had to hurry.

Their odds were slim at best, but she had to try. Helena had to hope that she had not, in fact, managed to destroy in madness the one good thing left in her world.

/

_The drive was not smooth._

_Clear of the winding mountains and nearly out of Wyoming, there were still barricades in every direction impeding her progress. Headed east back toward South Dakota, she was shocked by how quickly information spread in this modern age, and by how easily it caused a panic. South on I-25 was the better option, the safer and more sound option as cars piled up, and from there she could take detours around major metropolitan areas._

_Glancing at her passenger, her precious cargo, she knew the safer options were the only options._

_She stopped at a gas station a little outside of Casper, a little beyond her decision to head south until she ran out of land, to fill up and acquire some first aid supplies. She was met with the sight of scrambling townsfolk looting the store, the storekeeper shouting at them uselessly as they scurried away like rats hoarding their next meal. And, she thought idly, perhaps they were._

_The shopkeeper watched her approach with wary eyes and raised his unfixed shotgun._

_"Ain't selling, Lady."_

_She held up money. "I, Sir, do not intend to steal from you."_

_The man was middle-aged, heavyset and balding. Longish, curly tufts of hair stuck up in all directions as if the man has walked near one of Nicola Tesla's coils, and his ill-fitting shirt looked dirty and ragged._

_His face wore an expression just as frayed as his shirt._

_"What's it matter, anyway? It's the end of the world, after all."_

_He turned and walked back into his store and shrugged. "Take what you need. Keep your money."_

_"I pay my debts," she replied._

_He turned back to her, a curious look on his face. "Lady, what am I gonna do with money when we're all dead? You wanna pay me back? Fix the weather."_

_The words haunted her as she gathered supplies and filled the gas tank of her rented sedan, and as she packed back up, after tending briefly to Myka, she spared one last look at the dejected man through the gas station window and realized she had stolen from him._

_She had stolen everything from him, a faceless man in a crowd of faces._

_And the debt she owed him could never be repaid._

/

The quiet house had once been a beautiful, luxurious home. Situated on a generous peninsula, it overlooked the northern waters of the lake, and stood out against the ashen landscape even in the midst of the end of the world. Now, it was a treasure trove of supplies: a down comforter to replace the ragged quilt that barely kept Myka from freezing at night, enough canned food to feed them both for a month or two, rugs that could be turned into very nice fur-lined coats, candles, matches, flashlights, batteries. There was even a surprisingly well-stocked gun cabinet in the corner of a comfortable, rich-colored room that may once have been an office. She would leave some of the ammunition hidden in the house for pickup later, but took with her the shotgun and two pistols.

She was headed back out the way she came, laden with so many supplies she wasn't actually sure if she'd make it back with all of them, when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She drew one of the sidearms quickly, and pointed it in the direction of the corner of the expansive living room filled with silent electronics and dusty memories of another time. For a long moment, she held her breath, watching, and wondering if the movement had been anything more than her own imagination.

But there it was again, a shifting of grey tones amidst more of the same.

Helena approached carefully, aware that her time was running out, and came across the still form of a large grey wolf. She thought, perhaps, the movement had been the animal's fur as its torso heaved with breath, but its eyes were closed and its body was very still. To be sure, she nudged it with her dark black boot and stepped back, but before she came still once more she knew from the stiffness beneath her toe that the creature was dead, and a pang of guilt hit her hard as she imagined what the animal must have looked like in the wild, before, and how it must have suffered in its last moments.

But then, she spied the movement again, and leaned over to find its source.

A lone wolf pup nestled into its mother's back, shivering from cold and weak from exhaustion and hunger. It didn't move much, but it was still possessed of enough life to shift once in a while as it sought warmth against its deceased parent.

She aimed her pistol at it, thinking that a quick death would be merciful for the poor thing, but just before she was set to pull the trigger the tiny wolf cub looked up at her with shining hazel eyes, and she hesitated. They were intelligent, so much like a human's, and so close to the color of her Christina's eyes. In them, she saw an innocence that remained despite her very best efforts to destroy it.

And the thing lifted its shivering body and stumbled to her feet, curling against her black boot, still in search of warmth.

Even as she leaned down to pick the pup up, she cursed herself. It was such an irresponsible idea to bring in another mouth to feed, and yet that was exactly what Helena was considering. She reasoned the animal might make a decent companion –during the evening, another pair of ears to listen and help drive away the predators that grew bolder by the night, and something to help her hunt during the day with proper training.

As the pup snuggled against her chest and stopped shivering, she found that even though the cost of the extra mouth to feed likely outweighed all the benefits, she was as incapable of killing this innocent creature as she had been Myka.

She'd already made so many mistakes with the best of intentions. Why not add one more to that list?

/

She opened her eyes, and her senses, to the sounds of silence and the feeling of bitter cold.

Her vision was bleary and the colors were dull, and she wondered why as she began to turn her stiff neck in all directions, taking in her surroundings with a pracitced eye for detail. There was a light - a faint and grey light - coming from somewhere to the left of the room, washing the old, weathered wooden wall in the same bleak tones. She blinked once, twice, and again until her eyed finally remembered how to focus.

With that sharpness came memories: of the room, of the pain, of an indeterminate amount of time bathed in shades of grey as if the color had long ago drained from her world.

And perhaps that was right - the last time she remembered seeing color was standing on the Yellowstone caldera. The forests around her were lush and green, and the weathered stones beneath her feet were all polished smooth and glassy from a long-dry ancient river.

She rememebred the red of the blood that poured from Artie's shoulder, the fiery gleam of an insatiable rage burning within Helena's eyes, and the way her ruby lips curled as, after begging Helena to stop, she snarled her determination and refusal.

And she rememebred how, for a moment, that snarl had blurred, and the world went dark.

Myka knew that the absence of color was no accident - Helena must have followed through. If color meant life and warmth and hope, then her world was appropriately without it.

She pushed herself into a seated position and, with effort, swung her feet to the side of the bed. She took note of the makeshift double splints on her legs, though, and reconsidered the idea as remembered pain began to come into sharper detail. She had no idea how much time had passed, and she had no idea how broken her legs had been. Judging by the angry, puckered scars on her shins, as well as the presence of one large bandage on her right thigh, it hadn't been long enough for broken bones to properly heal.

She gingerly pulled her feet back into bed and then, already tired again, leaned back against the worn headboard.

As Myka stared at the wall, fragments of conversation came to her. She remembered Helena's frightened voice against an overhwelming agony, her soothing tone as she tended to her. She remembered the barely palatable taste of whatever food had been scraped together, she remembered waking up, dazed and freezing in the middle of the night. She remembered endless fragments of momentary lucidity.

And she rememebred that someone had been there for all of it, through all of it.

She closed her eyes as tears welled. Myka couldn't fathom why Helena had bothered to save her if she had struck the final blow. She couldn't understand what she had done to Helena that would drive the woman to keep her alive, only to watch the world die around her. Anger seeped into her thoughts, rage at the other woman's audacity and arrogance. How dare she cast such judgment upon the world? How dare she decide the fate of so many living things?

The sound of a door opening downstairs forced her eyes open, and her heart began to race. The footsteps were light and unhurried, and despite the fact that Myka knew it was most likely Helena her blood began to rush harder as her anger surged. At length, the door to the bedroom opened, revealing the face of her savior...and of her executioner.

The other woman stilled as she entered the room, the trembling of the tray in her hand the only indication of her shock. Around her body was wrapped a makeshift sling, and by the bulge at her back there were supplies of some kind in it.

"Myka," she spoke, her voice soft. "You're awake."

"Yeah," she replied, her hard glare never leaving the other woman's face as she crossed to her side and placed the tray at the bedside table.

"I'm...I'm glad."

"Really? Because you don't sound very happy about it."

Dark eyes clouded for an instant, an expression that Myka didn't miss, even still dazed and in pain. "Don't be ridiculous, of course I'm happy to see you awake."

The tray was set on the bedside table, laden with a glass of what looked like it might be orange juice and a stew that actually smelled decent, as well as some clean bandages, an assortment of pills, and alcohol swabs. Helena made a move to feed Myka, but she took the bowl herself.

They sat in awkward silence as Myka ate what she could, her anger and fatigue drowning out hunger. The stew tasted like something out of a can, and Myka thought that was probably very accurate, all things considered. She got through about half of it before giving up and placing it gingerly n her lap.

Her dark-haired caretaker took the bowl away, handed her the glass before dropping an obscene number of ibuprofen tablets in her palm, then took the first aid supplies and set about cleaning the bandage on Myka's thigh.

She winced in pain as it was prodded, and gasped when the bandage was removed. The scar was jagged, much like the others, but so much rougher, and still open despite several stitches. The patient hissed as the wound was cleaned, prompting the older woman to look up.

"You've finally begun to heal. This isn't as bad as it was, but the pain must be unpleasant. Take your pills, Darling."

"Don't call me that!" she spat back. Helena stilled in her ministrations in response, and frowned.

"Take the pills. Please."

The rush of anger was brief, and draining. Myka glanced at the tablets and popped them into her mouth, then took a few good gulps of the juice before she frowned at its unusual taste.

"Tang?"

"So the label informed me," came the reply, even despite the previous outburst. "It also informed me that it included many essential vitamins that have been difficult to acquire."

Myka stared at the liquid before taking another sip. "It's good. I used to drink it as a kid." She closed her eyes and sighed. "I haven't had it in a long time."

Fatigue began to settle in once again, beckoning with the seductive promise of dreams of a time and place away from where they were, with the possibility that she was living in the dream, and that her place in this strange, bleak world was a dream.

A tear slipped free before Myka even realized she was crying.

"Why did you keep me alive, Helena? What did I do to you to make you hate me so much?"

She heard a whimper then, the sound of something small and not human. Her eyes darted to the sack at Helena's side, the one from which she had yet to pull a single item.

"What is that?"

Slender hands reached into the sling and removed an object...the only object, and Myka gasped in surprise when she set eyes on the tiny wolf cub. The creature blinked in surprise as it was pulled back into the light, and sniffed the air suspiciously as steady hands presented it to the new person in the room.

"I found it while gathering supplies," she explained, her voice low. "It was alone. It's so very ill-advised, but I couldn't simply leave it there to die." She placed the tiny thing on the bed, and Myka's heart caught in her throat as it curled into her side immediately, seeking warmth and shelter blindly from anything willing to give it.

Her own feelings were so at war, so very baffling that all she felt was a bubbling anger - at Helena's arrogance and actions, and at her own inability to articulate her emotions.

"How...how can you be like this?"

The other woman looked confused...and hurt, and resigned, and defeated, and Myka cursed her hyper-observant mind for cataloguing that, for analyzing it and concluding that the appropriate resonse was sympathy, that it was ever sympathy for the devil before her.

"What?"

"How can you throw life away the way you did? How can you ensure the deaths of so many people, the destruction of so much nature, and decide to _save_ it at the same time?"

"Myka...I..." the other woman started, the expression on her face shifting to one of almost pain, and Myka couldn't bear to look at her any longer. She closed her eyes, slipping her hand over the helpless creature at her side, shielding it from the cold and the pain and the misery of the person beside her.

"I should have let you in. I should have let you stop me. You are the one good thing left in my world, and I should never have let my rage overtake me such that I endangered you...or Artie, or Pete, or anyone else. I was wrong."

"That doesn't make up for anything! Are any of them alive? My mother? My father? My sister? Anyone I ever knew before? You may be the last person living that I ever knew...or cared for, Helena." Her voice broke. "And now I'm stuck with you! Not them, you! You who destroyed everything! You who killed them all!"

Her breath was heavy as the emotion took its toll, and she fell backward against the pillows, spent. Helena pulled a ragged blanket about herself, perhaps staving off an emotional coldness as much as the physical chill.

"I can never ask for forgiveness. I can never make it right."

"No," Myka muttered, opening her eyes again, "you can't."

"But I can spend what's left of my miserable life doing what I can to..." Helena cut herself off, then started again. "I intend to see you healed, at least physically, from what I have done to you. After that...you may do what you wish with me."

She stood then, moving to the door with haste, but paused just before leaving.

"I don't hate you, Myka. Far from it. I...I care for you, too much...and not enough, it seems. And I'm sorry."

"For not caring enough? For destroying the world?"

Helena looked up, meeting her eyes briefly.

"All of it. And I'm sorry I was ever inficted upon you. You deserved better. Perhaps the world did, as well."

It was at the click of the door, as if her tears had been waiting for the cue, that they began to fall in earnest, releasing frustration and grief and anger and pain upon the surface of her skin in salty streaks. She curled inward, around the animal still at her side, and sobbed until she fell unconscious.

When she woke again, it was after dark, and the warm light of a candle lit her blurry gaze. Sleep and exhaustion pulled at her, keeping her drowsy and just barely aware, but something had stirred her. At once, she felt the difference: warmth over her, around her, a pleasant cocoon where there had been a chill before. At her arm, something that was shivering stopped, and only the even, rhythmic tickling of soft fur could be felt.

It was a blanket: warm and soft and light, wrapping them in the first warmth she could remember in her long convalescence. It felt like her comforter at Leena's. It felt like home.

Before she could feel anything more other than grateful, sleep pulled her back under.

/

_The interstate was surprisingly sparse, for all the panic up north. She wondered if news had failed to spread as quickly as she originally thought it would, wondered again if she hadn't made the right decision, made the correct choice in ridding the planet of the disease of man. Did they think it was a hoax? Did they think they could escape it? Did they honestly think they were far enough away to dodge the danger?_

_She pressed the pedal down a bit more, because she knew the truth: they were nowhere near far enough away to survive._

_Roadsigns slipped past with little notice as Helena put Denver several hours into the rearview mirror, as she began to consider how far south was far enough, and if there was such a thing on this side of the planet. She reasoned a desert area might work, but she knew that those regions in the United States were still too close, that even Florida and Texas would be consumed by ice. Their best chance was nearer the equator, at the warmest part of the planet._

_Something flashed on a sign as it passed by, something familiar...a set of words that meant something, but not to her._

_Colorado Springs, it said._

_She cast a glance at Myka, stirring fitfully in the seat beside her, and for the first time the ramifications of saving Myka struck her._

_She was creating a world so much like the one she had left, one without joy and happiness and hope. She had struck three blows of misery and malcontent, and it rained sorrow and tragedy. There was no taking it back._

_What hope did they really have, she wondered. Perhaps she should stop there and let Myka at least meet her end with people she loves?_

_No, a small voice told her, quiet, but dominant in the sudden silence of her mind. No, you will save her. You will find a way to save her._

_But what kind of life would that be?_

_Myka's phone had long ago been fished out of her pocket and left in the cupholder, off. Helena reached for it and switched it on quickly, then glanced over at her charge once more. She would not risk stopping - there was no time to spare, really - but she quickly found what she was looking for and typed a series of words, then hit send._

_She sped through Colorado Springs, hoping she'd chosen the correct recipient of her message, and running from her new guilt. It was selfish, and she knew it, but she could not let Myka go. She needed to save her. She needed her to be alive._

_As long as Myka lived, Helena could still struggle for redemption._

/

_*Tracy,_

_Get Mom and Dad and all the supplies you can pack and go to South America, as close to Brazil as you can. Please trust me, and please leave now._

_I love you - Myka*_


	3. Chapter 3

Helena followed a forgotten fence line along what might have been a well-traveled road, before. Now, the posts and beams were bowed beneath the heavy burden of ash and the ceaseless snow, and had given way in so many places. The wolf cub, growing fast and strong, tracked beside her as she walked, alert for the sounds of movement across the endless blanket of silence.

The wind, the rustling of bare branches, and the sound of the powder as it scrunched beneath their feet were the only noises, however, as they continued north.

She'd seen so much evidence of the life that used to be in her journeys: farm houses abandoned and barns collapsed beneath the weight of an icy burden the structure was never meant to hold. It was tragic and, in a strange way, beautiful. The land was at peace, the _world_ was still for the first time in tens of thousands of years. It was everything she had wanted it to become in her great and terrible wake.

And Helena hated it, hated herself for the price she had exacted to make that world.

The snow crunched softly as she stepped once more, free of the long fence line and headed toward another set of trees, but the earth beneath felt different. She tapped her foot, digging her boot into the slush, finally grazing the unique texture of asphalt beneath her soles. She looked up again, both ways, as it were, and realized that the trees she meant as her destination were in fact a median on a broad, open expanse of interstate. But the highway – once busy and filled with cars – was now burdened only with ice and a smooth layer of powder over it.

How quickly nature had moved to cover up the marks of mankind.

She sighed, then looked down at the wolf pup beside her.

"Come," she muttered to the animal. "I do not believe we will find what we seek in this direction."

Her canine companion yipped, then turned back in the direction they'd come from and placed her nose to the ground. The pair walked back toward the fence line, toward the forest, toward the cabin and Myka.

The days since Myka had finally awakened continued, and shortened. The weeks grew colder, and Myka's fury continued in a cold burn. Helena had expected it, of course, once her charge finally recovered enough to remain aware for more than a handful of minutes at a time, but nothing could have prepared her for the way that a once-warm, green gaze would turn so frigid, and the way that glare would pierce through her heart.

And she deserved it - she knew she deserved it – but that didn't change the fact that all she wanted in life anymore was to see Myka Bering smile.

The wolf had helped. It had imprinted quickly to the pair of humans, particularly Myka, and provided some small amount of joy in their harsh lives. It, they discovered, was a she, and her soft grey fur was enough for Myka to name her Shadow. Helena approved of the name – it seemed as if the wolf was exactly that to both of them.

A month later, Helena had started taking Shadow with her on morning hunts, just to get her used to the concept. The animal was a keen, intelligent creature that managed with little effort to figure out what her role needed to be, and within a few weeks, was actively participating in the food gathering effort.

In the afternoons, or on the days when Helena would go back to the abandoned houses and scavenge for supplies, she would leave Shadow with a still-hobbled Myka, and in much the same way as with the hunt, the young canine was very quick to accept her role: protect the human at all costs. Myka had once reported, in a voice that was so close to amused that Helena had ached, that Shadow parked herself at Myka's side and listened in silence every day, and slept only when Helena arrived again despite Myka's every attempt to get her to relax.

It was near noon when the pair arrived back at the snow-packed cabin, and Helena noted with some relief that there was still a fire burning in the hearth, if the smoke coming from the chimney was any indication. The moment the house came back in view, Shadow bounded forward, excited perhaps by the prospect of seeing Myka once more, or perhaps simply looking forward to being warm again. Her thick fur coat had not yet fully grown out, and so Helena tried not to keep her in the hunt for too long.

Helena entered the cabin, and Shadow was instantly beside Myka on the blue sofa by the fire, excitedly licking her face in greeting. And Myka was laughing as she directed the young wolf to calm down.

Myka was _laughing._

The sound of it nearly took Helena to her knees.

She moved quietly around the kitchen as she prepared a meal from their stores, desperate to hear the melodious and long-absent sound for as long as possible. She knew that the second Shadow's playmate was made fully aware of her presence, the sound would stop.

But she was so lost in the relief of hearing Myka's momentary joy that her grip on the can of soup she held slackened, and it slipped heavily through her fingers. She reached for it, fumbled it, and it landed with a loud clack against the wooden kitchen floor.

Shadow was startled out of her adorable attack, and the sound of joy faded, replaced by the heavy, looming silence that Helena had been subjected to for the last few months. She risked a glance toward the fireplace - the wolf had settled beside its true master, oversized head on her lap, and Myka had turned away from the room to stare into the flames.

She warmed the soup in the pot by the fire, and portioned it out into bowls, then held one of them out for Myka to take. She did so, sparing glances only at the food and never at the woman preparing it.

She was angry, still. Helena wasn't sure there would ever come a time when she would not be.

And with a gentle pat to Shadow's back, she left the warmth of the fire to eat away from Myka's sight.

/

Oh, yes, Myka was angry. She had never been so furious in her life.

Her legs were healing…slowly, and poorly despite Helena's admittedly skilled care and her own knowledge of medicine and anatomy. Her legs had simply been shattered. Had this happened in the course of any other assignment, she would have been sent to the hospital and skilled doctors would have rebuilt her legs with pins and metal plates in a sterile theater, and an artist of a surgeon would have minimized the brutal scarring.

Instead, he scars would be with her for the rest of her life…whatever that meant now.

But her crippling and the pain it brought had long ago become a penance.

Helena was trying…she could see that. She was doing everything it took to keep the pair of them, and now Shadow, alive. And she was skilled at that. The woman could do anything she put her mind to.

Like destroy the world.

And Myka was furious with Helena for that act, but she was perhaps more furious with herself for letting the woman in, for failing to see the warning signs, for never turning her exceptional eye for detail upon that very real threat that was H.G. Wells, and missing everything that everyone else could see so plainly.

And she would never forgive herself for that oversight – everyone else paid in blood for her mistakes.

And yet…Helena had saved one of them, at least. Helena had kept her alive.

In the many days she spent staring into the fire, on the afternoons where the books that the wayward inventor had liberated from abandoned homes were not enough to silence her disquieted mind, Myka sourly ruminated on her highly appropriate fate. She deserved to bear witness to the end of the world as much as the person that brought it about. The quick death she had begged for was a coward's way out, and something she simply hadn't deserved. This cold, this silence, this long wait for night to come was the world exacting its own justice.

Every time Helena brought her a meal, a book, stoked the fire, helped her to the bed or the bathroom or out of her own clothing, proud and independent Myka Bering was cowed and humbled in a particular way. And Myka longed for the company of the friend she thought she knew, of the woman she had…

…well, that certainly didn't matter anymore.

And she saw guilt in the hesitant way her caretaker would speak, in the uncharacteristic downward cast of eyes that once sparkled with a hard-earned arrogance, and the hunched posture of a woman who had borne the weight of the world for so long. It was not lost on Myka how only now, in the hour of her triumph, the weight had finally broken the spine of a woman she had once thought indomitable.

And it was in those moment's Myka realized that her greatest sin, her greatest failure would always be never having recognized that burden before it became too much, and never giving her friend enough support to continue on until she could be rid of it.

The faint daylight faded, and the firelight began to fill the cracks in the room. Myka sighed as she resigned herself to a conversation that the pair of survivors needed to have.

Myka was angry. She was furious. She'd never felt such rage before.

But Helena deserved to know that it was not all aimed at her.

She felt Shadow twitch beside her, and a dark head came round to follow some object of piqued curiosity. Myka turned her head to watch, unruly curls so long neglected bouncing about. It was perhaps a stray rabbit – a rare but not quite extinct occurrence, and the wolf would whine in a desire to go chase the potential meal, then settle down.

But then, Shadow did something she had never done before, and it made the fine hairs on the back of Myka's neck stand with dread.

The wolf, still staring out the back window, pinned her ears back and snarled.

/

They were running out of medication.

As well stocked as the multitudes of abandoned houses were, she had only found a form of modern painkiller strong enough to mitigate Myka's misery once. She had found a prescription bottle of Hydrocodone in a medicine cabinet about a month ago, and the ten pills within had been kept for emergencies, for when the pain was simply too much to bear. In the meantime, Myka used only moderately safe doses of over the counter medication.

They were running out of acetaminophen and ibuprofen, and the poor woman had already taken five of the stronger pills.

And so relief was a priority in her afternoon hunts these days, and she spent a large amount of time searching unusual locations for stray pill bottles.

And on more than one occasion lately, her growing concern had kept her out a little past the safe times.

She cursed as she checked the watch on her wrist, the watch she never took off anymore, and gathered her bags together for the long trek back to the cabin.

It was a familiar route to her now, though it was covered over almost daily by new ash and snow. The local wildlife had grown scarce in their area, some of it perhaps prematurely hibernating, and the rest…

Well, what was left was deadly. Darwin's theories were certainly proving themselves in a land where the only survivors were the creatures best equipped to kill everything else.

Helena was seriously considering the idea of migrating, of moving them to one of the houses she had found on the outer range of her explorations, of taking the time to move their stores, and then beginning the hunt again. It would take a month, she thought, and then perhaps another to explore new ground. But if they moved systematically, they would find new supply sources. They would stay alive.

But Myka would have to be moved, and Helena would have to devise a way to do that in the most painless way possible.

She arrived within sight of the cabin just as the last rays of light could penetrate the grey haze above, noting the smoke in the chimney once more. Warmth was a luxury these days, with so much of her time spent in the frozen wastes, and her step quickened just a bit at the thought of a warm meal by the fire.

But as she neared the door, as she picked up on faint and unfamiliar noises, she knew something was wrong.

Her bags were dropped and her sidearm was drawn, and she crept the rest of the way to the door.

The sounds formed, and her pulse quickened. There was struggling, and the foreign sound of Shadow's menacing snarl, fighting something inside the house. And then there was shouting – deep, alarmed, bellowing, and not Myka.

Throwing caution out the window, she rushed into the house, and was horrified by what she saw.

Shadow had a dark-haired man pinned, snapping and tearing at the arms he raised to protect himself. The animal was persistent and fierce, protecting her pack with her every instinct. On the floor between the wolf and the fireplace lay another man – perhaps blonde once, but so dirty and so bloody that there was simply no longer a way to tell. He was still, and likely dead if the angle of his neck had anything to say about it.

But there was a third man, large and red-faced and shouting profanities, and he'd managed to trap Myka by pinning his body over hers on the floor. She was fighting, and valiantly, but the man had leverage and the complete use of his limbs, and was able to free his knife and hold it above him with the intention to strike.

"You killed him!" he shouted. "You bitch!"

Helena didn't hesitate once the scene before her was processed: she took aim at the man threating Myka and fired.

His body dropped immediately, but Helena still crossed the room with the gun trained on him, head filled with swimming rage and heart on fire. Vacant, open brown eyes stared at the ceiling, blood pooled on the floor beneath his head. She fired twice more into his chest, just to be safe.

And Shadow, somewhat used to gunfire now, never let up her attack, and the agonized wails of her victim never ceased through it all…until they finally choked off, wet and gurgling, and then nothing.

Helena stood there for a long moment, bathed in her own red-hot fury, staring at the gun in her hand as if she couldn't comprehend the action she had just taken. It was Shadow's whine from behind her that drew her out of the fugue, that brought her back to the present, and that inspired her to turn around.

Shadow's blood-soaked maw lay across Myka's abdomen, as the woman lay still on the floor.

"Oh. Myka…"

Her knees gave out and she dropped, the pistol clattering away at once, and trembling hands reached to draw the other woman up, to wake her, to shake the life back into her.

"Myka!"

Green eyes blinked, showing life where Helena had feared it had somehow escaped, and the wave of relief that crashed over her brought the younger woman close in a crushing and desperate embrace.

"I am so sorry, Myka. I am so sorry. This is all my fault…"

The lack of response was disturbing, and if not for the trembling of the woman in her arms, she would have perhaps thought that she had returned too late…but the trembling broke into wrenching sobs, and long arms finally came up to wrap tightly around Helena's waist.

"They saw the chimney smoke…" she whispered though her terror. "They came looking for something to eat."

"Would that they had simply asked," Helena spat. "I would have happily shared with them if they had only –"

"No," Myka said, horror creeping into her voice. "I tried that. I offered them anything they wanted in the cabinets, if only they would leave me alone. They weren't interested in it. They were interested in _me_."

As the words settled in, as the true repugnance of what had nearly occurred settled into her soul, she clutched Myka closer, and the dark mantle of guilt that the former Victorian had worn since she struck the third blow in Yellowstone grew twice as heavy.

"I deserve this," she whispered. "I deserve the torment of watching the world die. You deserved something so much better than this fate…something so much better than ever having met me. And I will never be able to forgive myself for putting you through this torment."

The response was altogether unexpected, and heartbreaking in its implication.

"We both deserve this punishment, Helena. We both deserve this hell."

Helena started to protest, to vehemently disagree with the ridiculous notion that Myka belonged in this doomed reality, but she was struck by the incongruity of at once wishing the woman were safe somewhere far, far away from her and the feeling of comfort she had always drawn from the her presence.

"I'm sorry," she whispered again, utterly failing to find the words to convey her shame and dereliction.

But Myka simply clung to her, and bestowed upon her the closest thing to hope that Helena had found in months.

"I know."

/

When the lazy dawn broke the next morning, Helena hunted the ground outside the cabin for the supplies she had left outside. In the aftermath of the attack, she had forgotten them entirely, and there had been so many other things to do. The three intruders had been hauled out into the snow, far enough away from the cabin that any lingering predators wouldn't turn to their home for a supplemental meal, but only just. She was drained and tired, and wanted nothing to do with the vile men.

The thought had occurred to her, briefly, that it would be justice to use their flesh as they had intended to use Myka's, but the idea was so distasteful that the thought was gone as quickly as it had come. They could rot, for all she cared.

At length, Helena found the bags and slung them across her shoulders to complete the journey she had started the day before, and as she passed within sight of where the bodies should have been, turned to pay them one more mind than she should have.

It shouldn't have surprised her that there was nothing left of them but scraps of cloth.

And there had been justice, after all, and in her favor for now – their carcasses had fed the predators, and it had bought them all more time.

She would use it…tomorrow.

Today, they would all simply rest.


End file.
